Keld Helmer

Keld Helmer-Petersen is one of the most influential Danish photographers in the 20th Century. He was an international pioneer in colour photography and was a central figure in not only Danish but also European modernist photography. His career spanned 70 years and he had strong interest in modern architecture, industrial areas and structures. He was very prolific and continuously experimented and challenged the many possibilities of the photographic image

Keld Helmer-Petersen is recognised as a pioneer of colour photography. His self-published book 122 Colour Photographs, appeared in 1948. The photographs were ground-breaking in their use of colour as subject and their abstract qualities. As Martin Parr observes ‘…for the 1940s it was sensational – way ahead of its time.’

I don’t want my pictures to ‘look like something’. They should just look like pictures.

    Keld Helmer-Petersen, Life, November 28, 1949

​But significantly, over a career that spanned six decades, the vast majority of Helmer-Petersen’s work involved black and white photography – often portraying a very graphic sensibility achieved by exposing high-contrast film negatives.

editing process

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final images

As well as experimenting with high contrast black and white images, I also experimented with colour gradients and invert to really bring out the shape of the industrial buildings.